Chapter Text
Kyria glared at the phone as if it had personally offended her and tried to massage the headache away from her temples.
“I don’t recall you having the ability to glare something to death,” Phil remarked from the doorway. “If you have since developed that skill, let me know so I can update your file.”
“Hunters are assholes,” she said with a scowl. “But we already knew that and I truly doubt you stopped by after a meeting with the director to check on my recruiting progress.”
“He has taken an interest in your new department,” Phil offered.
Kyria scoffed. “My new department? He’s the one that ordered its creation. I’m just the one who got waylaid into heading it. That’s what I get for being the only certified SHIELD employee acquainted with things that go bump in the night. It took an omicron black for Fury to figure out that only one didn’t cut it. So, really, what’s going on?”
“You wouldn’t happen to know a Carver Edlund, would you?”
“Who?”
He handed her a book.
“All Hell Breaks Loose,” she read. “A Supernatural Novel by Carver Edlund.” On the right side of the cover was an ominous cloud of smoke. On the left was what looked like a black American muscle car. What caught her eye was the figure in the middle: a black-haired woman, her face in shadow, with an arm flung upwards to catch a bolt of lightning.
Her friend and sometimes handler indicated she turn it over. “Late one night, Sam walks into a café . . . and wakes up in a ghost town. The Yellow-Eyed Demon is gathering his ‘special children’, and as Sam struggles to discover his purpose, Dean has to search through a 3,000 mile haystack before something else finds his brother first. Because the Yellow-Eyed Demon isn’t the only thing interested in Sam – and what’s coming could change the fate of the world. Coulson, what is this?” Kyria finished in agitation.
“This is one of a series of books printed by Sera Seige at the Flying Wiccan Press: Publishers of Quality Science Fiction and Graphic Novels. We view it as a potential security breach,” the SHIELD agent replied.
Kyria regarded the book in her hands as if it were a poisonous snake. “This series really follows Sam and Dean Winchester?”
“Yes, although SHIELD appears in two of the books.”
“Monument, Colorado?” she asked in a pained voice.
“The title of that book is Jus in Bello.”
“Are the depictions accurate?”
“Unfortunately.”
Kyria felt sick. “I’m a character in a science fiction novel. Please tell me it isn’t widely read.” Even ignoring the fact that she was a government agent partnered with spies and was around a lot of dangerous secrets, she didn’t like to acknowledge her parentage.
“Luckily, they’re pretty obscure,” Coulson said blandly. “There are a couple dozen books that were put out before the publisher went bankrupt, but circulation is near zero. We’re tracking down the author now. Find out what he knows. You’ll probably want to get the Winchesters in on this.”
She could only nod weakly.
***
Listening to the brothers bitch about twisted fans writing twisted things about their personal lives would have been so much more amusing if Kyria didn’t know what some of those fans had written about her.
“Oh, give it a rest, already!” she exclaimed, interrupting Dean’s latest rant about slash fans. “You think it’s annoying for you? For all that I’m only in two books, I seem to be a very popular character among fans. They’ve written me with Clint, even though I’m on record stating he’s not my boyfriend, with my former handler, and with both of them at the same time. They’ve even got me with one or both of you. There’s also a few that pair me off with the Director, which is something I really don’t want to think about. No one in IT will look me in the eye anymore!”
“You have an IT department reading fan stories about you?” Sam asked with a grimace.
“Potential security breach,” she ground out. “I’m a half-human government agent and my biggest secrets have been published for anyone to read.”
Dean joined his brother in grimacing. “Okay. Your life sucks more.” Her answering smile darkly promised retribution. “So . . . what about Chuck Shurley?”